How to repeat text in Google Sheets.

Basic REPT in Sheets

Same syntax as Excel:

=REPT(text, number_times)

Example: =REPT("Yes! ", 3) returns Yes! Yes! Yes! . Output is one cell with the repeated text.

Repeating across many rows with ARRAYFORMULA

This is where Google Sheets pulls ahead of Excel. If you have a column of words and another column of counts:

=ARRAYFORMULA(REPT(A2:A10, B2:B10))

This runs REPT for every row in the range, generating a column of repeated strings without dragging the formula down.

Bar charts in cells

Same trick as Excel — useful for quick dashboards:

=REPT("█", A2)

If A2 is 7, you get ███████. Combined with conditional formatting, this makes mini bar charts directly inside cells.

SPLIT to get separate rows from repeated text

If you want N separate rows of the same text (not one cell with everything), combine REPT with SPLIT:

=TRANSPOSE(SPLIT(REPT("apple,", 5), ","))

This gives you a column of 5 cells each containing "apple". Useful for generating test data quickly.

When to use our online tool instead

Sheets REPT is perfect for in-spreadsheet workflows. For one-off generation (a long string to paste somewhere else, test data for a form, a WhatsApp message), our online repeater is faster — no need to open a spreadsheet, just type and copy.